Social change

Note: As I mentioned earlier, I am taking a few weeks away from the blog to relax and reconnect with the world outside of social change. But I am leaving you in the incredibly capable hands of a rockstar set of guest bloggers. Next up is Kelly Born, program officer at the Hewlett Foundation working on their Madison Initiative, which focuses on reducing today’s politically polarized environment. Kelly also writes for the always thoughtful Hewlett Foundation blog. Here is her guest post…

In March of 2014, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation launched a new initiative focused on US democracy reform, The Madison Initiative. The overarching goal is to “help create the conditions in which Congress and its members can deliberate, negotiate, and compromise in ways that work for more Americans.”

Our mandate is for a 3-year, exploratory initiative to assess whether and how the Foundation might be able to make a difference here. During this period, we are focused on three central questions:

Are there solutions and approaches that are worth pursuing?

Is there ample grantee capacity to pursue these ideas (or can we help build it)?

Are there funding partners we can work with to make it happen?

In exploring this problem of congressional dysfunction we realized early on that, unfortunately, there don’t appear to be any silver-bullets that will solve this problem – it’s not as if campaign finance reform, nonpartisan redistricting, or increased voter turnout, taken on their own, would resolve our current democratic ails (even setting aside for the moment how hard it would be to actually achieve these changes!).

Regrettably, there is no clear consensus on what to do to improve the system, much less on how to do it. This may be, in part, why Inside Philanthropy awarded The Madison Initiative with 2014’s Big Foundation Bet Most Likely to Fail. Given this, our view has been that current congressional dysfunction is occurring in a system of systems (and sub-systems) that are interacting in complicated ways.

Early on we decided to develop a systems map rather than a theory of change to guide our work (working in close partnership with the Center for Evaluation Innovation and Kumu, collaborations we’ve written a bit about here). Theories of change typically outline desired (social or environmental) outcomes and then map backwards, linearly, to the activities and inputs necessary to achieve those outcomes. Systems maps are perhaps better suited for more complex, uncertain environments like democracy reform, where cause-and-effect relationships can be entangled and mutually reinforcing, rather than unidirectional.

Version 1.0 of our map includes more than 35 variables we believe are contributing to the problem, distributed across three key domains: Congress, Campaigns and Elections, and Citizens. In light of this complexity, rather than making an initial set of big bets on a few key variables, we have instead spread a series of smaller bets within these systems to see where grantees might gain traction, and what this reveals about the system’s more confounding parts.

The benefits of this approach are many – in fact, I cannot imagine effectively tackling this particular problem any other way. But employing this spread betting approach also involves a few challenges for us at Hewlett, and for our partners and grantees. The trade-offs are worth considering:

We are acknowledging and respecting complexity, but this can sow seeds of confusion for our partners. Our approach has the essential benefit of taking into account the systemic complexity and interdependency of what we are trying to help change. We are avoiding over-simplifying and thereby misconstruing our reality (a good thing). But we are exploring more than 35 variables (ranging from deteriorating bipartisan relationships to the proliferation of partisan news media), with more than 60 active grantees. This approach can be hard to manage, and harder still to convey to others – especially anyone accustomed to a more linear and readily understandable theory of change.

Our course correcting helps us learn, but has a real impact on partners. As we diversify our investments to learn more about what works, we will continue to learn more about which efforts are having the most impact on congressional dysfunction, and which are less germane to the problem. As we do, we will necessarily converge (and double down) on a few core interventions, while discontinuing others. This will mean disappointing organizations that we respect and had supported at the outset – an inevitable byproduct of this approach, but unpleasant for all involved.

Our evidence-based approach risks coming off as overly academic. We are determined to avoid investing in solutions where there is not solid evidence to support their viability vis-à-vis our goals. This helps us avoid squandering funds on interventions that won’t, ultimately, work. But this approach also runs the risk of coming across as standoffish, academic, and idiosyncratic in the eyes of a practitioner-driven field that in some instances may be pursuing work that is harder to (or has yet to be) substantiated by solid research.

We’ve certainly got our work cut out for us. But we deeply believe that the social sector shouldn’t shy away from complex problems. We also believe that the benefits of this approach far outweigh the costs. It enables broad-based learning, and truly forces us to constantly re-think the grants we are making. Building in these tough choices, rather than forging ahead with a pre-defined strategy, requires that we not just learn, but that we act on what we discover. And fast.

In short, while beset by a few real challenges, we’re convinced that an emergent path is the best path forward. Surely we will place some wrong bets along the way. But, as a favorite colleague of mine often says, “it’s not like we’re selling cigarettes to children.” All of our grantees are doing great work – ultimately it will (not so simply) be a question of which of these lines of work is most likely to improve Congress.

In 2017, we will go back to our Board of Directors to discuss whether and how The Madison Initiative’s work will continue. In the meantime, we would love to hear how other funders have approached emergent problems like this – and how nonprofits might advise that we manage these inherent challenges as we progress?

Note: As I mentioned earlier, I am taking a few weeks away from the blog to relax and reconnect with the world outside of social change. But I am leaving you in the incredibly capable hands of a rockstar set of guest bloggers. First up is David Henderson, Director of Analytics for Family Independence Initiative, a national nonprofit which leverages the power of information to illuminate and accelerate the initiative low-income families take to improve their lives. David also writes his own blog, Full Contact Philanthropy, which is amazing. Here is his guest post…

In early June I was invited to be on a data mining panel at the Stanford Social Innovation Review Data on Purpose conference. The conference was full of nonprofit executives interested in tapping the big data revolution for social good. Naturally, the panel moderator asked us panelist to weigh in on if, and how, data was changing the social sector. Characteristically, I turned a feel-good question into a critique of the state of analytics in the social sector, which I’ve written about elsewhere and will expand on here.

Data is not changing the social sector. I would argue it’s not changing the world either. While it is very likely that data is changing your world, I do not believe data is changing the world.

For all the talk about how data is revolutionizing the world and that software is eating everyone’s lunch, the fact is that for the over two billion people who have no lunch to eat (literally and figuratively), the impact of the data revolution is muted, if nonexistent all together. Changing the world indeed.

Data ExhaustThe corporate data revolution has largely been fueled by data exhaust. Data exhaust is comprised of the various digital breadcrumbs you and I leave all over the Internet but that we might not think about as data in a traditional sense. For example, companies like Facebook and Amazon don’t simply log data when you click “submit”, they track your every movement around the Internet, logging every click and clack, allowing unprecedented marketing optimization. All these additional metrics are data exhaust, as consumers are almost passively generating data marketers can capture and monetize for almost nothing.

On the social sector data conference circuit, countless data-wonk hopefuls mindlessly espouse all the incredible things nonprofits can do now that data acquisition costs have been driven almost to zero. This is nonsense, as the social sector has no such data exhaust analogue, which is why the social sector doesn’t truly have big data.

Nonprofits often work with populations with a number of barriers, which drives up the cost of data acquisition relative to for-profit counterparts. Just some of the data collection barriers nonprofits grapple with include working with populations with low levels of literacy or limited to no access to technology. How exactly is one going to generate digital exhaust without any digital possessions in the first place, or while working three jobs to support her family?

Obviously, you don’t. The barriers too many people face in this world are exactly why nonprofits are in the business of social change in the first place. But it is also why we are so poorly poised to capitalize on the alleged data ubiquity, as that revolution is not permeating class boundaries to the extent technology evangelists would have us believe.

Analytical CapacityAnother reason why data is not changing the world, or rather, why the social sector is failing to change the world with data, is that by and large we simply are not investing in the necessary capacity to turn data into insights.

While a new “data for the social sector” company with an unfortunate misspelling of a common word seems to pop up every day, there are very few companies actually building the tools the sector needs to put data in to action. Meanwhile, our technological overlords in Silicon Valley are depressingly stuck on the assumption that innovation in the social sector means fundraising software. Sigh.

If we want to use data to change the world, we need to think beyond software tools and simple (if colorful) data visualizations. Nonprofits need to invest in building their own analytical capacity, both by hiring analysts and also by investing in the entire staff’s ability to be intelligent consumers of data analysis.

Illusion of InsightEveryone loves the idea of being data driven, but very few organizations actually want to make the investment. My employer, the Family Independence Initiative (FII), did make that investment. In turn, FII is now able to not only run regressions and build decision tree models, but can continuously learn from its data, augmenting every level of the organization from Chief Executive to line staff.

That investment is not cheap. Worse yet, like any good analyst, I can be a major buzz-kill. Much of my time is spent explaining why a particular regression coefficient doesn’t necessarily mean we are super awesome. In fact, a good analyst can make you less sure of your social impact.

But facing the tough reality paves the way to real impact. We cannot collectively do more without exactingly quantifying how little we’ve accomplished. These are tough truths, and most nonprofits would rather assume the hypothesis of their greatness, leaving no room for data’s insights.

The Path ForwardJust because data is not changing the world does not mean data cannot change the world. I believe it can, which is why I do what I do. While by and large nonprofits fail to invest in rigorous analysis, organizations like GiveDirectly are leading by example, showing what is possible when fact is paramount to fundraising.

Ultimately, being data driven is less about statistical techniques and more about a relentless commitment to the truth. The truth is that data is not changing the world. But if we, as a sector, can elevate the truth above all else, then we might just be able to change the world after all.

Nell: A big focus of your work at NPC is making impact measurement ubiquitous in the UK’s nonprofit sector. How far is there to go and how does the UK compare to the US in impact measurement being a norm?

Tris: There’s undoubtedly been significant progress over the last decade on impact measurement in the UK, and NPC has been at the heart of that. There are several ways in which that progress is visible, as well as in the sector level surveys NPC has done to track change. For example, most charities say that they have invested more in impact measurement in the last five years, and as a result we see that it is increasingly the norm for charities to have a defined theory of change, a role within the organisation to lead on impact measurement, and to talk about their impact measurement efforts in their public reporting. Most institutional funders also say that they look for evidence of charities’ impact measurement efforts in their funding decisions. Demand for measurement advice is growing, and the impact measurement industry is growing in response – there are more consultants offering services in this area.

The growth of social (or impact) investing has also driven greater interest in impact measurement. The industry as a whole acknowledges the centrality of impact measurement and the need for social returns to be as well evidenced as financial returns. There have been a number of key developments to move the field forward here, from Big Society Capital’s outcomes matrix to the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce and European GECES reports and guidance on impact measurement – all of which NPC has helped to deliver.

What’s not as clear is how much progress there’s been on the use of impact measurement, rather than its mere existence. When NPC repeats our field level state of the sector research in 2016, we’ll be asking a number of questions to tease out whether impact measurement activity is leading to use of impact evidence in decision-making – whether it’s becoming embedded in practice.

My concern is that we don’t see the signs that impact measurement is driving learning, improvement, decision-making or wholesale shifts in allocating resources towards higher impact interventions, programmes and organisations. It feels like impact measurement is something that everyone acknowledges we need to do, but few have worked out how to use. With the result that it’s bolted on to the reality of organisations delivering services and raising funding, but not embedded at the core.

A few examples of what I mean: if impact measurement were driving learning, I’d expect to see lots of organisations sharing their insights on success and failure, and learning from each other. I’d expect to see common measurement frameworks which allow organisations to understand their relative performance. These are still very rare. I’d also expect to see investment by funders and investors in the infrastructure that we know is needed for learning – journals, online forums and repositories and practitioner networks. There are some emerging examples of these, like the What Works Centres, but they’re still mostly just getting off the drawing board.

Most importantly I’d expect to see charities adjusting strategies and programmes in response to their learning. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, but the examples I do see are the exception, not the norm.

When it comes to comparing the UK and US, it’s really hard. We don’t have comparable field-level studies, and we need to work together more closely on these if we want robust insights. For example, if you compare the findings in NPC’s 2012 paper with a recent US study it looks like nonprofits are more likely to say the main purpose of impact measurement is learning and improvement. But actually we don’t know if this is the result of the questions we asked and how we asked them.

In both the US and the UK, it’s clear that the rhetoric on impact measurement has advanced over the last decade. What’s not yet clear is how the reality underlying that has shifted.

Nell: While there are many similarities between the US and UK nonprofit sectors there are some fundamental differences, in particular views about how much government (vs. private charity) should do for public welfare. How does the UK’s view of government’s role help or hurt the capacity building efforts of nonprofits?

Tris: The UK government has taken on a leading role in the social investment space, and it’s here that efforts to build capacity are most visible. Investment readiness programmes have been introduced over the past few years to build general capacity to access social investment. More recently, impact readiness programmes have arrived to do the same for impact measurement capacity. NPC has been working within these programmes to help a number of charities, and cohorts of charities, and it’s clear that they can play a major role in helping the sector to improve. But capacity-building in general has felt the effects of austerity just as much as any other area of government funding. Perhaps more so, as limited funds are increasingly focused on service delivery, not on efforts to improve services.

When NPC repeats its survey of the field, I am certain that we’ll find that limited funding to develop impact measurement capacity is still the major barrier cited by charities. It doesn’t look like anything’s going to change that any time soon.

Nell: NPC works at the nexus between nonprofits and funders, helping the two groups to understand and adopt impact measurement. In the US few funders will fund impact measurement systems, even though they want the data. How does NPC work to convince funders of the need for investments in measurement (among other capacity building investments)? What progress have you seen and what’s necessary for similar progress to happen in the US?

Tris: While a proportion of funders have for a long time supported evaluation, the majority still don’t. We’ve worked through programmes like Inspiring Impact (a sector-level collaborative programme to help embed impact measurement) with a group of funders to develop principles, and help them to embed support for impact measurement in their practice. These efforts can help those who already see the benefit of capacity-building to advance their work, but it’s tough to engage those who aren’t already thinking in this way. I think that the leap we need to make is to selling impact measurement through its benefits, by showing how organisations improve, and their impact increases, as a result. And because impact measurement isn’t yet typically embedded in organisations, those benefits aren’t as evident as they should be.

What does seem to work well is trying to get funders and charities to work together in a specific outcome area to make progress, rather than making a general case for impact measurement. Cohort capacity-building programmes, learning forums and shared measurement initiatives are all part of this. The key thing here is that then the funder is committed to the outcomes everyone’s working towards, and impact measurement becomes a tool for everyone to achieve those outcomes together.

Nell: You are part of the Leap Ambassador Community that recently released the Performance Imperative. Have you seen similar interest groups forming around these issues in the UK? And what role do you think interest groups like these play in a norm shift for the sector?

I have been privileged to be part of this amazing community of leaders, and one of a minority initially from outside the US. I’m convinced we need a similar movement here in the UK, and globally and have been discussing whether and how to approach this with the group from the start. And as co-Chair of Social Value International – a network of those working in the social impact field, I’m part of an effort to do this at the practitioner level too.

The Leap Ambassadors Community brings a human face to what is often seen as a technical subject. After 11 years of working in the social impact field, I am convinced that we cannot sell impact measurement just by increasing the supply of good technical solutions. We need a movement to build the demand for those solutions. We need the right frameworks to measure impact and manage performance. But we need the leaders to demand them, and to harness them to hold themselves accountable, learn and improve, and share what they find.

Most notably, the long fight for marriage equality was won with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. It is moments like these where the long, arduous road towards social change makes sense. But that wasn’t all that was going on in the busy month of June. From “new” tech philanthropy, to the orthodoxies of philanthropy, to the oversight of philanthropy, it was all up for debate. Add to that some fascinating new ideas for museums, new data on how Millennials get their news, and a fabulous new blog about the history of philanthropy. It was a whirlwind.

Below are my picks on the 10 best reads in the world of social change in June. But let me know what I missed. And if you want a longer list, follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+.

The biggest news by far in June was the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges making gay marriage legal. In the ruling opinion Justice Kennedy writes: “As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death…Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” While this is a huge win for equality, I think the two really interesting parts of the story are 1) how relatively quickly gay marriage went from banned to law and 2) the various actors that made that social change happen. Some argue that Andrew Sullivan’s 1989 landmark essay in New Republic started the intellectual case for gay marriage. This New York Timesinteractive map shows how gay marriage went from banned to legalized state by state over time. And Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, describes the decades long struggle of nonprofit reformers and their donors, including the Haas Fund in San Francisco, to make marriage equality happen.

A new blog, the HistPhil blog, launched in June to much acclaim. There is an enormous need for a historical perspective as we work to make nonprofits and the philanthropy that funds them more effective. HistPhil has already begun to provide that in spades with excellent posts on the Supreme Court ruling, among many other topics you will see below.

And if that wasn’t enough philanthropic controversy for you, there were two other debates waging in June. First was the response to David Callahan’s New York Times piece, “Who Will Watch the Charities?” where he argued that we need greater oversight on nonprofits and their funders. Phil Buchanan of the Center for Effective Philanthropy quickly shot back that while Callahan raised some important questions, he ignored the complexity of the sector and reform efforts already under way. And then the two got into an interesting back and forth. Finally, Callahan wrote a follow up piece for Inside Philanthropy. Good stuff!

Along the same lines, the other point of debate in June centered around a Stanford Social Innovation Reviewarticle where Gabriel Kasper & Jess Ausinheiler attempted to challenge the underlying assumptions in philanthropy. But now that we have a new expert on the history of philanthropy on the block, Benjamin Soskis from the HistPhil blog gave us a more accurate historical perspective about just what is and isn’t philanthropic orthodoxy.

Michael O’Hare, professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, wrote a great long form piece in the Democracy Journal arguing that museums could become much more relevant and financially sustainable if, among other things, they began selling their stored artwork. Crazy controversial, but fascinating, ideas.

Writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Matthew Scharpnick cofounder of Elefint Designs, argued that recent ProPublica investigations of the American Red Cross uncovered our double standard for nonprofits. As he writes: “We are asking organizations to meet competing demands—many of which are at odds with how they are funded. We want nonprofits and NGOs to solve problems as effectively as private-sector organizations, and we want them to do it without any of the advantages and with far more constraints.”

The Ford Foundation announced a sweeping overhaul in their grantmaking strategy. They will now focus solely on financial, gender, racial and other inequalities, and double their unrestricted giving. Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation, described how he is closely watching this historic move. And Brad Smith, president of the Foundation Center, offered a view of how philanthropy has approached inequality.

The Hewlett Foundation’s Kelly Born provided some interesting thoughts about what a new Pew Research Center report about how Millennials get their news means for civic engagement.

And finally, on an inspirational note, Steven Pressfield articulated how “artists,” or really anyone hoping to bring something new into the world (a painting, a novel, a solution to a social challenge), should think: “As artists, [we believe]…that the universe has a gift that it is holding specifically for us (and specifically for us to pass on to others) and that, if we can learn to make ourselves available to it, it will deliver this gift into our hands.” Yes.

As I mentioned earlier, it is so important to take time away to rejuvenate and reconnect with your passions, family and friends. So I am taking my own advice and taking some time off later this summer to connect with the world outside of social change.

And so for the second summer in a row I’ve asked a group of social change thought leaders to write guest blog posts in my absence (you can read last summer’s guest blog posts here).

I am so excited about this year’s group of amazing social change thinkers. They are experts in social change finance, philanthropy, political reform, outcomes data, organizational effectiveness and much, much more. They are smart, thoughtful, engaged and visionary leaders. And they are all helping to move social change forward in big ways.

Below is the lineup of guest bloggers with background information on each of them. Their posts will begin in late July. Enjoy!

Antony Bugg-LevineAntony is the CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), a national nonprofit and financial intermediary where he oversees more than $340 million of investment capital and works with philanthropic, private sector and government partners to develop and implement innovative approaches to financing social change. NFF also creates the annual State of the Sector Survey. Antony writes and speaks on the evolution of the social sector and the emergence of the global impact investing industry. Prior to leading NFF he was Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation. He is the founding board chair of the Global Impact Investing Network and convened the 2007 meeting that coined the phrase “impact investing.” You can read my past interview with Antony here.

Kelly Born
Kelly is a program officer at the Hewlett Foundation working on their Madison Initiative, which focuses on reducing today’s politically polarized environment. Before joining Hewlett, Kelly worked as a strategy consultant with the Monitor Institute, a nonprofit consulting firm, where she supported a range of foundations’ strategic planning efforts. In addition to her experience as a strategy consultant, Kelly has worked with various nonprofit and multilateral organizations including Ashoka in Peru, the World Bank’s microfinance group CGAP in Paris, Technoserve in East Africa, and both The Asia Foundation and Rubicon National Social Innovation in the Bay Area. Kelly guest lectures on impact investing at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and often writes for the always thoughtful Hewlett Foundation blog.

Phil Buchanan
Phil is President of the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), a nonprofit that is the leading provider of data and insight on foundation effectiveness. CEP helps bring the voice of grantees and other stakeholders into the foundation boardroom and encourages foundations to set clear goals, and coherent strategies, be disciplined in implementation, and use relevant performance indicators. Phil writes and speaks extensively about nonprofits and philanthropy and rarely pulls punches when he does. He is a columnist for The Chronicle of Philanthropy and a frequent blogger for the excellent CEP Blog. He was named to the 2007, 2008 and 2014 “Power and Influence Top 50” list in The Nonprofit Times. You can read my past interview with Phil here.

Kathy Reich
Kathy is Organizational Effectiveness and Philanthropy Director at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation where she helps grantees around the world improve their strategy, leadership, and impact. Her team makes grants on a broad range of organizational development issues, from business planning to social media strategy to network effectiveness. She also manages the Packard Foundation’s grantmaking to support the philanthropic sector. Prior to joining the Foundation, she worked in a non-profit, on Capitol Hill, and in state and local government in California. Kathy serves on the board of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and on the advisory committee for the Center for Effective Philanthropy. You can read my past interview with her here.

David Henderson
I asked David to be a guest blogger again this summer because he is so insightful and often points out things that few others in the sector are willing to acknowledge. He is Director of Analytics for Family Independence Initiative, a national nonprofit which leverages the power of information to illuminate and accelerate the initiative low-income families take to improve their lives. David is also the former founder of Idealistics, a social sector consulting firm that helped organizations increase outcomes, demonstrate results, and organize information. He writes his own blog, Full Contact Philanthropy, which is amazing. You can read his past guest blog post here and my interview with him here.

Launched by the Obama administration in 2009, the SIF — a program within the Corporation for National and Community Service — provides significant funding to foundations that follow a venture philanthropy model by regranting that growth capital, along with technical assistance, to evidence-based nonprofits in “youth development, economic opportunity, and healthy futures” areas. In 2014, SIF expanded its efforts to include a portfolio of Pay for Success (social impact bond) grantees.

Now, 6 years on it is interesting to take a look back to understand what, if any, effect SIF has had on the nonprofit sector. The effect of the SIF is also critical given that, as of right now, the House and Senate have both defunded SIF in their respective funding bills.

To date, the SIF portfolio is made up of $241 million of federal investments and $516 million in private matching funds, which was invested in 35 intermediary grantees and 189 subgrantee nonprofits working in 37 states and D.C.

The SIRC report focuses on the current progress of SIF grants made during the first three years of the program (2010-2012). The report finds two clear positive results for the SIF so far. The SIF has:

Added to the nonprofit sector’s evidence base about which programs work, and

Built the capacity of nonprofit subgrantees, especially in the areas of “performance management systems, evaluations, financial management, regulatory compliance systems, and experience with replicating evidence-based models.”

On the negative side, however, the report finds that the SIF put real burdens on funders and nonprofits with its fundraising match requirements and the federal regulatory requirements. The report also finds that the SIF has had little effect on the sector as a whole because the SIF has not very broadly communicated their learnings so far.

To me, of course, most interesting are the report’s finding about capacity building at nonprofit subgrantees. There is such a need for nonprofit capacity building in the sector, and this was a clear goal of the SIF.

The SIF is one of few funders that do more than pay lip service to performance management by actually investing in building the capacity of nonprofits to do it. However, the SIF has been criticized for mostly selecting nonprofits that already had strong capacity. And indeed, the SIRC report finds that the SIF was most successful among those nonprofits that already had high capacity (in performance management, fundraising function, etc.) prior to SIF funding. Indeed, the report found that “poorly-resourced intermediaries working with less well-resourced community based organizations have been at a disadvantage.”

One SIF grantee in particular, The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, really struggled to build the capacity of their subgrantees whose starting capacity was so low. As they put it:

During the course of participation, it became clear that…[SIF] was really better suited for replicating existing programs or, at a minimum, investing in well-established programs that had some level of sophistication around organization systems and evaluation.

This mirrors earlier criticism of the SIF that it was set up to grow only those nonprofits that were already doing well, while those nonprofits that struggled with basic capacity issues were left out. The SIF has struggled to determine whether it is funding innovation (new solutions with limited capacity), or proven solutions (with a long track record and the corresponding capacity). It seems the two are mutually exclusive.

What the SIF is trying to do is such tricky business. To identify, fund and and scale solutions that work is really the holy grail in the social change sector. Certainly there are hurdles and missteps, but I think it’s exciting when government gets in the social change game in a big way. Six years is really too soon to tell. So I hope that this brief SIF experiment is allowed to continue, and we can see what a social change public/private partnership of this scale can really do.

Earlier this month, after much effort, I finally convinced a worn out nonprofit leader to take some time off to rejuvenate. But it was a battle.

Because they are often incredibly driven by ambitious social change visions, tremendous empathy for the plight of their clients, and an overly developed gratitude to their board and donors, nonprofit leaders push themselves extremely hard.

In fact, nonprofit leaders are really quite excellent at self-denial. I see this all the time in my coaching practice.

But nonprofit leaders you must give yourselves permission to breathe. And I don’t mean an afternoon off, or a weekend without checking email.

I mean a real break. A break where you start to find yourself again.

Not yourself as a nonprofit leader, but yourself as a human being with interests, connections, and passions outside of your organization. Someone who explores the world around you. Someone who realizes that you are on this earth for a very short time and while your role in social change is absolutely necessary, it is not your only contribution, nor is it the only place you can (or should) find meaning.

Because let’s be honest, the only way a pace like yours ends is in complete social change burnout. By existing only on the unending treadmill of work, work, work and ignoring your very human need to reconnect with your passions, your spirit, your family and friends you are setting yourself up for eventual breakdown. And make no mistake, without you as leader at the helm, your nonprofit’s work will grind to a halt.

So during these summer months when things are perhaps a bit slower, give yourself permission to take an extended period of time away.

And I mean really away.

Turn off your phone and your email. Step back from social media (believe me it will still be there when you get back).

Without the constant deluge of information and demands on your time assailing you, you are free to hike the mountains, get a massage, take in an art exhibit, watch your children or your grandchildren play (and join them!), explore your hobbies, read an amazing book. It really doesn’t matter what you do, just that you do something different and meaningful. Embrace the parts of yourself outside of your social change job, those things that make you fully human.

You may even consider taking it further, as philanthropic thought leader Lucy Bernholz did recently with a “digital sabbatical” where she went offline (no email or social media) for six weeks. She found the experience incredibly rejuvenating: “Without the addictive stimulation and distractions of digital life it feels like my brain grew three sizes.”

As the daily glut of information continues to increase, it becomes more important than ever to take a breather, to embrace the quiet. There is tremendous value in reconnecting with what makes us human, not machine.

And let me assure you that I am giving myself this same advice. I know how hard it is to step away from the email and social media beasts. I’m as concerned as you are with letting people down or not making enough progress.

But I am slowly coming to realize that sometimes progress is found in the quiet. And sometimes it is enough — more than enough — to just be. To sit and watch the world in all its beauty float by and have absolutely no effect on it other than to appreciate it.

If you need help finding the space to do this, check out the Coaching I offer nonprofit leaders.

In the nonprofit world there is often a disconnect between funders of nonprofits and their understanding of the fundraising activity necessary to secure their gifts. Funders (and board members) rarely understand how critical fundraising is, how it works, and what’s required to do it well.

But in the hope that greater understanding leads to better actions, I’d like to offer 7 of the most important things funders (and really the sector as a whole) should understand about fundraising:

Nonprofits Must Fundraise or Perish
It seems so obvious, but so many in the nonprofit sector act as if fundraising can be ignored or shuffled to the side. Board members hate to do it, and foundations refuse to fund it. But let’s be clear. Without a strategic, sophisticated mechanism for bringing regular revenue in the door there is no organization and certainly no social change. Fundraising must happen, and it must happen effectively in order for a nonprofit to survive and thrive. So funders (and board members) do not have the luxury of saying they don’t want to talk about, think about, or fund fundraising efforts.

There is a Sector-wide Lack of Fundraising Knowledge
Because fundraising has for so long been ignored or sidelined, most nonprofit leaders and their board members don’t have sufficient fundraising experience or training. And neither do funders. There hasn’t been enough research into the fundraising discipline broadly and little investment in educating nonprofit leaders about how to do it well. The end result is that few people know how to crack the fundraising nut.

Every Nonprofit Has Two CustomersPart of the solution to cracking that nut is understanding that unlike for-profit entities, nonprofits have two (not just one) set of customers. Nonprofits provide products and/or services to the first customer (“Clients”), but “sell” those services to the second customer (“Funders”). Therefore “sales” in the nonprofit world is much more complex than it is in the for-profit world. Yet for-profit businesses can spend much more money on their sales and marketing staff, training, systems and materials than a nonprofit is allowed to spend on fundraising.

Sustainability is a Funder’s Problem Too
And funders must start providing it. Funders often want a nonprofit to demonstrate financial sustainability, but those same funders won’t invest in the capacity necessary to create that sustainability. Instead of just pointing out the sustainability problem, funders must become part of the solution. Funders should step up to the plate to help nonprofits create a capacity building plan and then provide capacity capital (along with other fellow funders) to build a more sustainable organization that will survive once a funder is gone.

Earned Income is Not a Solution
But a more sustainable organization does not mean one based on earned income, or selling a product or service. Nonprofits will always be subsidized, at least in part, by private and/or public contributions. By definition, nonprofits exist to address a failing in the market economy (i.e. not enough food or jobs). Thus, those failings will never be overcome purely by market forces. So while earned income is something every nonprofit should explore, it is not right for every organization and will never become 100% of a nonprofit’s revenue model. So don’t confuse sustainability, which means a longterm financial model, with earned income.

Nonprofit Leaders Fear Funders
Let’s just be honest. A funder is providing much needed resources to a nonprofit and that automatically creates a power imbalance. Until we figure out a way around that inherent dynamic, funders must limit the hurdles they put in the way of nonprofit leaders and instead give them the financial runway to make their social change vision happen.

Let’s face it, without money there is no social change. But the knowledge, experience and infrastructure necessary to generate enough money is woefully short in the nonprofit sector. That could change if funders lead the way toward more investment in strategic, sustainable financial models.